THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Drawn by C. E. Riddiford
MAP OF SOUTHWEST AFRICA IN THE
VICINITY OF THE NEW OBSERVATORY
animals and wild ostriches pick their
living among the stones that litter the
ground.
A GIGANTIC CUP WITH A RIM I,000
FEET HIGH
It is a strange mountain. Lying about
20 miles to the west of the railroad and
250 miles south of Windhoek (Wind
huk), capital of Southwest Africa, Mount
Brukkaros sticks out as the only peak of
consequence in a circle at least 50 miles in
diameter. It is inaccessible on all sides
except by the dry bed of a stream ap
proaching in a gradual ascent from the
south.
The mountain is 5,200 feet above sea
level and quite 2,000 feet above the pla
teau. Only four or five miles in its great
est length and with no neighboring peaks
for many miles, its isolation and abrupt
ness are uncanny.
The whole massif is composed of choc
olate-colored rock with very little soil,
though sparsely tufted with bunches of
dry bush and grass and here and there a
queer cactus or dwarf tree. The cliffs
are seamed into great cubes and the slopes
are littered with fallen fragments. Seven
hours of hard scrambling on the steep,
rock-strewn slopes barely sufficed to lo
cate a single firm ledge lying favorably
for the site of the observatory cave.
The summit is like a cup with a flat
bottom about half a mile in diameter and
a steep rim I,ooo feet high. From a V
shaped break in the southeast side of the
rim a precipice 60 feet high leaps to the
bed of the dry stream, which leads down
a three-mile corridor to the plateau.
Formerly there were barracks of mud
bricks on the plateau bottom, built to
shelter the German heliograph operators
stationed there during the native wars,
but these are now in ruins. We had
hoped that they might prove useful for
the observatory.
A HOME FOR THE OBSERVER FOUND IN
A CAVE
Since the observations require the use
of the bolometer, that electrical thermom
eter sensitive to a millionth of a degree,
one requires very constant temperature
surroundings. These are most easily ob
tained by making a horizontal shaft or
cave some 30 feet deep, right into the
slope of the mountain.
As sun rays are to be reflected into the
cave in a southerly direction, and as it is
necessary that the reflector should be ex
posed to the rays within an hour of sun
rise, these requirements call for a firm,
sloping ledge facing north in a place with
clear eastern exposure.
The whole forenoon passed fruitlessly
in search on the eastern rim for a firm
ledge lying suitably, but the field glass
disclosed a fair prospect near the top of
the western rim.
By I o'clock everybody was worn out
with fatigue, heat, thirst, and hunger, and
a retreat to the pools just below the preci
pice was proposed. Yet, as we had no
provisions for a night on the mountain
and as our connections for the steamer at
Cape Town, I,ooo miles away, urgently
called for a quick decision, I took the
Hottentot and plodded up a gulch toward
the western rim.
Half way up I spied a large cave in a
firm limestone ledge. Crawling up and
into it, I was reminded by the delicious
coolness of the "shadow of a great rock
in a weary land."
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